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SLGI Transport Policy
SLGI vehicles (SLGI Trains and SLGI Fleet) are automated, scheduled transport vehicles. They are made not for the pleasure of creation, but as a wish to make our virtual world a better place. Reason Some residents wanted that scheduled trains to exist and move after a program, like trains on real railways. Also, some residents wanted connections to exist somehow between main railway network in Heterocera and remote rails in Sansara. And also, in East continents, people long wanted for a transcontinental passage between Corsica and Satori. SLGI team started building the SLGI trains and SLGI fleet because people asked us to do this. On the other hand, we all know the problems made by a high number of roaming vehicles on roads and railways. Creating a timetable for scheduled vehicles is a real hard job, to find the perfect solution between those who want more vehicles and those who want less vehicles (or want the railways, roads and waterways only for themselves). There are endless discussions on the forums about this subject. These vehicles are moving on Protected Land or on private-owned land (with permission). Our little team is opened for suggestions and wish the best for everybody. Roads, railways and other protected ways don't belong to a single person or a single transport company, but to all residents. Like in real world, vehicles must exist and protected ways (roads, railways, waterways and airlines) are made for transportation, however abusing of protected routes is not a good thing and must be avoided. Other reasons were to stimulate other people's creativity and to show that Automated Transportation vehicles can be built by anybody and to show, from above, the beauty of our virtual world. Operating these virtual vehicles is an honor for us and we treat it with big responsibility. IMPORTANT: These vehicles are NOT created for the pleasure of creating, but for the desire to make our world a better place. If you want to add, remove or modify these trains, ships or even all routes, contact User:Ana Imfinity. Feedback The reason why these vehicles are running is that people asked us to do so. Residents can vote if they want SLGI vehicles to be running or no. They can do so by clicking the vote machines located in rezz areas. Vehicles will run as long as the number of people voting yes exceeds the number of people voting no. Please note that voting machines don't display the results in public and they count the time of voting (this is to avoid residents with many alts from voting and not to influence the results). They are designed to prevent someone from voting twice. For any questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to contact our team, mainly User:Ana Imfinity, by notecard or by message inworld. However, I will ignore obscene messages (for example with words like 'fuck') or those messages with too many spelling errors. Automated Vehicles Status There is no official position among the Linden officials about automated vehicles and their use of protected roads. The main rules are found in the Terms Of Service that every resident must agree in order to enter the Second Life multiverse. The passages that might refer to automated vehicles are clearly discussed here. SLGI team developed all vehicles based on these advices and guidelines. However, there is a risk that, despite our best efforts, a vehicle might not behave as it should. If you notice that a train or a spaceship does violate in any way the Terms Of Use, please tell us immediately. Very useful for us was the experience gathered from other transport companies, from other, experienced residents and from all residents who contacted us. Land Status SLGI vehicles move on Protected Land. Protected land is public land. For limited areas, they can move on private land (see below). Protected Land On protected land, automated vehicles are allowed to move. However, the point of view of both residents traveling along the way and residents owning land near protected routes, is very important to us. Vehicles should exist on the roads, railways, waterways and air routes. Also, vehicles should be created for passengers and not just for the pleasure of crating. Private Land Sometimes, they move on private-owned land (with permission). Sometimes, private land is owned by a group. In this case, it is impossible to ask permission from all members. If you are member of a group that owns a parcel crossed by a SLGI vehicle and you don't want this to happen, please contact us. Sometimes, in case of a sim restart process, high lag or griefer attack, these vehicles can behave strange and it is possible that a vehicle loses its orientation and enters private parcels. If this happens and they cannot return to their original route in 150 seconds, they will self-destruct (unless the sim is working too bad). If you see a SLGI vehicle behaving badly, please contact Anaimfinity Resident. Sim Cross Failures Many times, vehicles are affected by sim crossing failures. Depending from case to case, the problems can be as follows: * Vehicle crash. The vehicle can simply vanishes. SLGI team cannot do anything to improve. * Passenger crash. The passenger might find itself out from the vehicle, in who knows what spot and of what sim. Trying to improve this, many times SLGI vehicles slow down at a sim cross, have a station there or take a softer route. * Sim restart processes. Seated vehicles cannot enter temporary closed sims. Unseated vehicles also cannot do this, but if they apparently do, they go off-world and vanish. If a vehicle is inside a sim that went off, it will get auto-returned. All these events affect schedule. SLGI team cannot do anything to improve. * Fake vehicle. Sometimes, you might see a ghost vehicle at the place where it crossed into another sim. This is a server error. Just click on it and it will vanish. * Fake movement after sim cross. This happens in case of physical vehicles. However, SLGI vehicles are not physical. After a sim cross, they just stop until the new sim loads them into data. Sometimes, if a vehicle cannot pass into the new sim (if the target sim is restarting), it might try to use an alternative way, entering nearby private land. If this happens, the vehicle will see that it entered private parcel, will try to get back and if it does not, security protocols will force it to self-destruct (see below). No Spam Policy We take spam very seriously, as well as other side effects that our vehicles can cause. If you find any problems with any SLGI vehicle, please contact us. # No collisions. SLGI vehicles are always made Phantom. This means that they cannot collide with people or other vehicles along the route. # Low script lag. All SLGI vehicles have low-lag scripts. They use about twice more resources then a classic Heterocera opensource train. So, there is no chance that they will ever eat-up sim resources. # No particles and no lights. SLGI vehicles create almost no particle effects and no light bursts. We don't want our roads to be full with smoke. There is one exception: the plutonium core released when they exchange scripts, as required by SLGI Technology. # Low prim, simple prims. We try to keep prim count as low as possible and also to use more simple sculpted prims, so they can rezz more easy on your viewer. #'No noise.' No SLGI vehicle will make sound. They only use chat to tell when they reach a station or when they change fuel. # Keep the way clear. On roads, they fly usually at 5 meters above road surface. On waterways, they usually move at 10 meters above water surface. This way, other vehicles will not have any problems. For SLGI Trains, they follow the railway or fly at some altitude. In order to avoid other passing trains, they try not to interact with rail switch stands. # Follow suggestions. We are open to suggestions. If you want these vehicles to stop at your place or if you want them to avoid your place, please contact us. # Do not block the view. SLGI Trains have the power to become invisible if needed. They do so while flying in some residential or protected areas. SLGI Fleet rely on their small size. Schedule Some people are very happy about transportation services, while others want less vehicles or the roads and waterways only for themselves. There is very hard to find the perfect solution between the two. Also, two other transportation companies exist on the market: Yava Script Pods and Second Life Transport Authority. In these conditions, SLGI team tested various schedule models. A vehicle every 6 hours for each route. Anaimfinity Resident, head of SLGI, works on the railway in real life and has experience with schedules. She proposed the four trains a day principle, as it is used on the rail where she works and it proved to be efficient. All SLGI vehicles, released on protected land, follow this basic rule: a vehicle at every 6 hours, 4 vehicles every day. Limited common routes. Unfortunately, many vehicles must follow common routes, in order to reach their destinations. this might create the illusion of an excess of vehicles. In case of SLGI Fleet, the problem was solved by using a different flying route. There are at maximum two routes at low altitude (10 meters above water or 5 meters above road), the other vehicles are flying at 100 meters high. Low-altitude routes have frequent stops, while high-altitude routes only have a few limited stops, where they descent from the havens. In case of SLGI Trains, there are some common routes that cannot be avoided. For example, 4 trains follow the common route Achemon - Crenulate, while other 4 are running on common route Achemon - Tuliptree. Since each train is released at every 6 hours, that means there will be 4 trains every 6 hours (2 trains in 3 hours). Still, that does not disturb major railway traffic. No Advertise SLGI vehicles are not offering any commercial data and they cost nothing. All operation and maintenance costs are supported by SLGI team. Security All vehicles are equipped with deleters, that activate a self-destruct sequence when: # a vehicle enters unwanted parcels and remains there more then 300 seconds # a vehicle is immobile for more then 200 seconds # a vehicle stays inside a sim for more then 20 minutes # a vehicle is over 30% late from schedule # emergency command is sent to them by trackers. A 6th alarm is triggered for new vehicles, if the script has errors. In all 6 cases, a message is sent to the vehicle owner, so that the problem can be checked and solved. IMPORTANT! There is one case when we can do nothing: parcels with script restrictions and auto-return time set to zero. In that case, since scripts (including deleters) cannot work, vehicles will not self-destruct. Also, since scripts used for communication are failing, there is no way we can see blocked vehicles in places that restrict scripts, to manually delete them. Because SLGI vehicles follow long routes (sometimes it takes 12 hours to complete a tour), we could not check the entire route, meter after meter. So, there is a chance that somewhere along the way a vehicle will enter, at least with part of its body, on private land. If you see this, please contact us. Keeping up to the schedule During a sim restart process, SLGI vehicles are disoriented. Usually, they see they are late to schedule and will self-destruct. However, if they find themselves unable to enter a sim, there is a chance they will try an alternative way, entering nearby private parcels. Onboard deleters will trigger a self-destruct sequence (see below). Also, during a griefer attack, that will affect sim performance, vehicles will not move fast enough and they risk to stay longer then the auto-return time for the parcel they are inside. Repeated tests showed that in normal conditions vehicles should return 99.9%. However, in practice, 90% of vehicles return home. There are a few reasons for this: * Sim restart processes will kill 70% of all moving vehicles. This happens once a few days. This is the cause of 70% of vehicle failures. * Second problem is represented by sim cross failures, one major problem that affects majority of vehicles. This is the cause of 20% of vehicle failures. * Griefer attacks can make a parcel become full or can eat all resources of a sim, making it work very slow. This is the case of less then 1% of vehicle failures. * There are also other reasons, not completely known. Each vehicle is able to adapt its speed to keep up the schedule. Without this, the schedule error is of 2% (about 7 minutes for a vehicle traveling 6 hours). For vehicles traveling less then 3 hours, corrections are not needed, but for long tours (which can take over 12 hours), a correction was needed. If something unexpected (like a high lag or an unusual low lag) happens, vehicles will change speed, so that in 30 minutes the error is corrected and they are back on schedule. Passengers can see if a vehicle is adjusting its speed. The engine displays a few useful information, including total distance, elapsed time, vehicle name and reactor status. Usually, reactor is 50%. If you see the reactor working at another value (let's say 56%), it means that the vehicle is late and is trying to adjust speed. Reactor can work at maximum 75% and at minimum 25%, to avoid the risk of an overload. Movement And Stations Vehicle speed is set to a specified value, considered a safe speed. At this specified speed, vehicles are safer from sim cross failures, passengers have enough time to be transferred to the new sim and still vehicles move fast enough to avoid getting auto-returned. Each vehicle has a timetable and is able to adjust speed to keep with its schedule. Speed is checked at every stop and if there are differences above two minutes, vehicles can increase or decrease speed. Since the fusion engine is very precise, this speed adjustment usually never happens. To make sure vehicles don't accelerate or decelerate too much, stations are fixed at less then 20 minutes one to the other. Stations are chosen based on various principles. The main arguments are as follows: SLGI Trains # Trains stop at existing railway stations (public or private). # In addition, they can stop at road crossings or important switches, even without a station. # While flying, they stop at bridges, since they are intersection points between roads and waterways. # SLGI Trains can stop at islands, when found. # Additional stations are chosen close to major interests, at route end points or if distance between stations is above 20 minutes. SLGI Fleet # In Satori, along the roads, stations are chosen at information maps. Additional stops are at islands. # On Nautilus roads, stations are chosen at information points, intersections and in places where another spaceship changes route. If not on a road, ships will stop at islands or parcels of land. # For Corsica, stations are fixed at intersections and rezz zones. Sometimes vehicles can stop at islands or other interesting spots. # In Jeogeot, stops are fixed at rezz zones, intersections, islands or major road buildings. # In Gaeta 5, stops are fixed at road ends, intersections or high altitude points. # For Sharp Continent, stops are set on bridges or when finding a road. # For Gaeta 1, stops are usually at road end points. # In Zindra, stops are usually at route ends. # Additional stations are chosen where distance between existing stations should be above 20 minutes or where a route ends. If you want a vehicle to make a stop at your land or if you want an extra station along the way, just contact us. Keep it low lag SLGI team defined for this a measure unit named lag unit. An opensource VRC train creates about 250 lag units. An average car engine creates 350 lag units. A Bloodlines vampire HUD creates 1500 lag units usually and can reach 2500 when trying to bite someone. A Heterocera switch stand creates 150 lag units when paused and 2200 when changing the line. A simple sit script or a hover text script creates 10 to 15 lag units. The most lag of all are scripts that request an external connection, such a browser on prim, that might need up to 5000 units. A SLGI vehicle creates 305 lag units. At this value, tests show that even if 100 SLGI vehicles are in the same sim, performances will not be affected by more then 1%. The display maps available at SLGI launch bases usually consume 150 lag units, but might reach 1200 units for a second, when updating position of a vehicle. Still, this is less then 1/4 of what a browser on prim uses. Still, there is an exception. During a fuel change, vehicles will create about 2500 lag units. This massive resource consumption is, however, limited for 5 seconds. SLGI Technology requires long-tour vehicles to change their fuel on long routes. Without this, vehicles should consume 700 lag units on their entire journey. See Also *Second Life Geography *SLGI Trains *SLGI Fleet *SLGI Technology